Director: Nuno Escudeiro Producers: Valerio B. Moser, Luc Martin-Gousset, Andreas Pichler
Description:
High in the French Alps, on the border between Italy and France, migrants fleeing war, political persecution and poverty risk their lives in the hope of a better life crossing dangerous mountain routes. Witnessing the migrants’ suffering and dismay, the local population of the Roya Valley has taken action to provide them with shelter, food and legal counselling. Nonetheless, in France, the transporting or hosting of undocumented migrants is a criminal offense, and the population has soon found itself on the wrong side of the law. So far, nine people from Roya are facing criminal charges, but with the support of lawyers they discovered that the local authorities were in fact violating their own laws. So they started to provide minors and refugees with legal support and to document the numerous human rights' violations committed by the State. Nuno Escudeiro documents the personal stories of common women and men who are struggling to keep a sense of morality and who have become engaged in reshaping their own nation's laws by engaging in civil disobedience.
Biography:
Nuno Escudeiro works on different fields of the moving image, exhibiting both in gallery and film festivals. His experimental dance short films Pass by, A dance Dictionary and White Nights have been screened in several national and international film festivals and received many awards. He founded the creative group PostmodernSquare, a member of the firestarter network, which involves eleven European organisations collaborating on new projects in order to develop and enhance the use of art within different social contexts. Nuno was involved in the coordination and facilitation of the theatre performance development project Limited Utopias, involving Ireland and Finland, supported by the European Commission, Irish Arts Council and Arts promotions Center Finland; the artistic residency Wonderous Stories: And it’s perfect as it is, involving Netherlands, Finland, Greece, Romania and Italy, supported by the European Commission; and Wonderous Stories: From Isolation to revelation involving Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, UK and Lithuania, supported by the European Commission. He worked on the films Chronicles of Wind and Stillness which portrays the institution of border controls in order to prevent refugees from traveling from Italy to Austria and Germany; and Moon Europa working with migrants living in the European Arctic.
